An Anthology of Oregon Short Fiction

The first inhabitants of Oregon had an intimate knowledge of the land and a rich tradition of oral storytelling. The white settlers brought their own tradition's and slowly learned to understand their new environment; this process, which editor Glen Love calls storying the land, continues to this day. The World Begins Here guides the reader through these stories of Oregon, ranging from a Nez Perce story of Coyote's attempt to bring his beloved wife back from the dead to Ella Higginson's story of a young factory girl's response to her lover's rejection. Here are stories of work, tragedy, courage, and the relationships between real, complex human beings.

We begin to belong in a place when we have made our relationships to that place memorable, through art. Some of Oregon's fiction writers are well-known. …But many other writers have also helped to make a place for Oregon in the larger imagination. The challenge of this volume is to collect the best short fiction from Oregon, from the familiar to the long-forgotten. Out of such a collection one can expect some memorable – and surprising – new meanings.